Sensing systems have been developed that use sensors to monitor an individual within a residence. Such systems may set thresholds for certain types of activity, such as eating or showering. However, not all individuals operate on the same schedule and accordingly, some individual's activities may fall outside a range of number of sensor activations and/or time period for doing certain tasks.
For example, a system may expect eating to occur at 8:00 to 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., and at 4:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., but an individual may eat only two meals a day at 10:00 to 10:30 and at 3:00 to 3:30. In such a situation, some systems may initiate an alert if there is no activity during the 8:00 to 9:00 time period even though that time period is not part of the particular individual's schedule.
Further, when a lack of movement or abnormal amount of movement is indicated, the sensing system may report the situation to a remote assistance center that may, for instance, contact a party to provide aid to the individual. However, not all such activity events indicate that the individual is in need of assistance.
For instance, the individual may be sitting in a chair or lying in bed for a prolonged period. These periods may, in some systems, be sufficient to initiate an alert for third party response, but may not actually be an emergency.
Hence, there may be uncertainties related to the sensor activations of such systems and/or related to the determinations of whether to initiate an action, for instance, based upon the reliability of signals from individual sensors. Further uncertainties may arise from analysis of all such sensor activations during an extended time period.